Two Views on Women in Ministry

But I know what Webb means—something like “about as close as you can get to being a full-fledged egalitarian without actually becoming one”—

In verses 13–16, Paul returns to the particular cultural manifestations of headship and subordination that triggered this instruction in the first place. Tellingly, all of Paul’s rationales are culture bound. Verse 13 asks rhetorically if it is “proper” (or “fit-ting”—prepon) for a woman to pray or prophesy with an uncovered head—a question that wo

One final theme in Paul’s letters must be unpacked before we turn to the explicitly prescriptive passages in the Epistles that generate so much controversy. That is the nature of several of the spiritual gifts. Included on Paul’s lists, in addition to apostles and prophets, which we have already treated, appear teachers and administrators (Rom. 12:

We are debating the role of women in ministry in this book, not whether husbands and wives have different functions within a marriage. And yet this latter issue cannot and must not be neglected, for the biblical teaching about the family forms the fabric and background for what is said about women in ministry. If role differences exist in the famil

Egalitarians often argue the restriction can be explained by the lack of education among the women in Ephesus, or alternatively they suggest these women were duped by false teachers—and thus the women would be allowed to teach once their doctrinal deficiencies were corrected.89 Both of these views are unconvincing. Paul could have easily written th

To love and to cherish’ becomes ‘to desire and to dominate.’”

A helpful analogy for me is the debate between baptists and paedobaptists.

My own view is that we look for all the support we can find, inside or outside the Bible, for any of its commands, but we are still bound to obey them, whether or not irrefutable reasons can be given.

Occasionally the debate between the complementarian and egalitarian views is framed as a choice between fundamental texts. For example, one author using the ordination